Partner news: GES acquires Aqwise

Partner news: GES acquires Aqwise in a strategic move to form a leading global water & wastewater treatment technology group

GES CEO, Michael Dayan, explained that the Aqwise acquisition positions GES as a leading, dominant player in the Water, Industrial & Municipal Wastewater Market in Israel and worldwide.

GES, which operates in the desalination, water treatment, and wastewater sector announced today that it has signed an agreement to acquire Aqwise, which over the past decade has achieved its status as one of Israel’s leading, rapidly-growing technology companies in the global water and wastewater treatment Sector.

GES, which is fully owned by the Generation Capital Fund (TASE: GNRS), which is traded at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, is the environmental branch of Generation Capital.

The acquisition of Aqwise comes in the wake of the latest deals GES has done in Israel, including the acquisition of Dekel Infrastructures, owner of a household solid waste sorting facility in the Jerusalem area and a contaminated soil treatment plant, and the acquisition of Derech Hayam, owner of the desalination plant in Palmachim in exchange for a total of approximately NIS 255 million.

Michael Dayan, GES CEO, said today that the combination of Aqwise’s engineering capabilities, the range of specialized technologies and its sizable global footprint, coupled with GES’s robust executive capabilities and Generation’s financial backing, are going to facilitate the delivery of a complete portfolio of services in the water and wastewater sectors to Tier-1 industrial customers, to municipalities and to other players dealing with environment-related challenges, including operational aspects and long-term financing.

The combined group will be a leader both in the industrial and municipal wastewater treatment market as well as in the water treatment market in Israel.

Aqwise will continue to operate as a separate entity, as a subsidiary wholly-owned by GES.

Elad Frenkel, the Aqwise CEO, said today that there are very few companies in the world with a clear business focus in the water sector, which offer such a broad range of technological solutions and have such an extensive international presence. Frenkel added that combined with the synergies and robust financial backing of GES, there is no doubt that Aqwise, alongside Aqana its anaerobic specialist subsidiary in the Netherlands, would be able to continue its rapid growth and further increase its global presence.

About GES – GES is a company wholly owned by the Generation Capital Fund. It was founded in 1988 and is one of Israel’s oldest companies in the water, wastewater, and environmental sector. Over the past year, GES has exhibited dramatic growth in its business volume after having concluded the acquisition of the Palmachim desalination plant and the household solid waste sorting facility near Jerusalem. It has also reached the financial closing of a project to build and operate a municipal waste management facility in the Shafdan area, while all the time its existing activity has been undergoing rapid business development. In addition, GES manufactures, imports, and markets high-quality industrial chemicals. Generation Capital is the first investment fund dealing in infrastructures and energy to be traded in Israel.

GES has proven experience in carrying out complex projects in Israel and worldwide and over the past 20 years has built over 500 plants in Israel and worldwide, wherein a large proportion of these, GES is also the operator. GES currently operates over 200 sites in Israel. The Palmachim desalination plant, which was built and upgraded twice to achieve a desalination capacity of 90 million cubic meters per year is just an example of its capabilities in this field. The Company offers its customers (power stations, chemical, petrochemical and electronics plants, metal factories, food and beverage factories, cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies, institutions, government and municipal authorities, military units etc.) a complete suite of services, which includes all of the project phases, from concept development to detailed engineering design, fabrication, construction and commissioning in the field, to routine operation and maintenance of the facilities.

In recent years Aqwise has emerged as one of the leading companies in Israel and worldwide in the development and implementation of innovative water and wastewater treatment solutions for the municipal sector and for the industrial sector. Aqwise invests heavily in research and development of innovative processes for wastewater purification and recycling and for energy recovery in order to provide solutions for the global water crisis and for the requirements of regulators and industry, which become more and more stringent from time to time.

Aqwise’s technologies have so far been implemented in over 500 sites in over 50 countries all over the world. The Company has offices in Mexico and Central America, The UK, Germany, Italy, and India.

Aqana is Aqwise subsidiary and partner. Aqana specializes in anaerobic processes that produce green energy from wastewater and which provide solutions for leading customers in the paper, food & beverage, and chemical industries.

These days Aqwise is carrying out advanced projects for some of the world’s most advanced municipal clients and also for multinational corporations such as Unilever, Coca-Cola bottlers, and Thyssenkrupp, with which it has signed one of the largest Israeli offset deals in recent years.